Stephen Harper, 48, leads Canada as its prime minister and head of the Conservative Party he co-founded in 2003. His election marked the end of 12 years Liberal Party rule.
Recently newsworthy for its involvement in "NAFTA-gate," Harper's administration was accused of leaking a memo that summarized private statements by an Obama adviser that the Senator's private position on NAFTA differed from his public position. Harper has denounced such meddling in the US election as unfair and most likely illegal.
Born in Toronto, Harper is the the first Canadian Prime Minister since 1968 not to attend law school. Known for policy over pizazz, Harper quickly accomplished campaign promises after being elected to run the minority government. A supporter of the unpopular Canadian effort in Afghanistan, Harper appointed a nonpartisan committee to evaluate the mission. Canada's slow growth is perhaps the greatest challenge facing the prime minister. Hopefully his bachelor and master degrees in economics will prove useful.
The opposition has been aching to push the Conservatives out of power, and recent Conservative Party scandals may give them their opportunity. Recently opposition leader Jack Layton called Prime Minister Harper a tool of the US Republican Party . . . to his face . . . on the floor of Parliament. Parliamentary democracies are great, eh? To see video read more.
Acne Jeans
Great video. And Jack Layton has a point. I've always called Harper "Bush 2.0".
1Hmm... interesting to hear a non-Canadian's take on Canadian politics.
For the record - Layton isn't actually Opposition Leader (an official term in Canadian politics); that's Stephane Dion of the Liberals. Layton leads the NDP, Canada's left-leaning social democratic party.
2Cool. Thanks eyelet!
3ah Stephen or Prime Minister Poutine as dubya once called him.
4Thanks for this. I could not have named the PM of Canada. Pretty bad. Canada is so "beige".
5Jack Layton isn't the leader of the opposition, that is Stephane Dion (Liberal Party)...Jack is the leader of the NDP, which is a left leaning party, that has very little seats in parliament. Although good ol'Jack makes news often!
Even with the recent
scandals, I think Harper still has a good grip on the situation. Hmmm, and I dont know if Canada is really facing a "slow growth" economy wise....I would say Canada is doing quite well in
that respect, the dollar has risen significantly over the past year and a half, among other strong commodities in the economy!
6bush actually referred to Jean Chrétien as "prime minister poutine" on rick mercer's "talking to americans", not harper...
i can't wait for harper to be gone, this party is simply a cleaned-up version of the ultra right wing reform party (same party, new boring name!). it wouldn't be so bad if the christian right agenda didn't show up in disturbing ways, i.e. this lovely piece of legislation that may pave the way to change abortion rights - http://ca.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idCAN0625185820080306
7i also wouldn't say that we (Canada) have a slow growth economy however, we are greatly effected by the US economy. and since the us economy is pretty much in a recession right now, we could be doing better ourselves. the higher dollar doesn't necessarily mean good things for our economy. we rely pretty heavily on what we export to the US and since our dollar is higher than the US dollar, the US is importing less from Canada. we're definitely seeing the effect of that on our timber mills. as for our PM so i think that mr. harper and his conservative party won the election because Canadians were desperate for change. harper has done some good but i agree he is definitely helping bushs' agenda.
8Post New Comment
Please share your opinion with our community, but make sure it is on topic and follows our Community Rules. We moderate comments and prohibit personal attacks, threats, spam, lewd images, or the promotion of your personal website.